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I pushed her aside. “It's never a good time.”
“Yes, but you don't understand. Andy is sick.”
“You expect us to believe that?” Lula said. “What do we look, stupid?”
Bender lurched into the room. His hair was a wreck and his eyes were half-closed. He was wearing a pajarna top and stained khaki work pants.
“I'm dying,” he said. “I'm gonna die.”
“It's just the flu,” his wife said. “You should get back to bed.”
Bender held his hands out. “Cuff me. Take me in. They got a doctor that comes around, right?”
I put the cuffs on Bender and looked over at Lula. “Is there a doctor?”
“They got a ward at St. Francis.”
“I bet I got anthrax,” Bender said. “Or smallpox.”
“Whatever it is, it don't smell good,” Lula said.
“I got diarrhea. And I'm throwing up,” Bender said. “I got a runny nos
e and a scratchy throat. And I think I got a fever. Feel my head.”
“Yeah, right,” Lula said. “Looking forward to that opportunity.”
He swiped at his nose with his sleeve and left a smear of snot on his pajama top. He hauled his head back and sneezed and sprayed half the room.
“Hey!” Lula yelled. “Cover up! You never heard of a hankie? And what's with that sleeve thing?”
“I'm gonna be sick,” Bender said. “I'm gonna puke again.”
“Get to the toilet!” his wife yelled. She grabbed a blue plastic bucket off the floor. “Use the bucket.”
Bender stuck his head in the bucket and threw up.
“Holy crap,” Lula said. “This is the House of Plague. I'm outta here. And you're not putting him in my car, either,” she said to me. “You want to take him in, you can call a cab.”
Bender pulled his head out of the bucket and held his shackled hands out to me. “Okay, I'm better now. I'm ready to go.”
“Wait for me,” I said to Lula. “You were right about God.”
“IT WAS A drive to get here, but it was worth it,” Lula said, licking salt off the rim of her glass. “This is the mother of all margaritas.”
“It's therapeutic, too. The alcohol will kill any germs we might have picked up from Bender.”
“Fuckin' A,” Lula said.
I sipped my drink and looked around. The bar was filled with the after-work crowd. Most of them were my age. And most of them looked happier than me.
“My life sucks,” I said to Lula.
“You're just saying that because you had to watch Bender throw up in a bucket.”
This was partially true. Bender throwing up in a bucket did nothing to enhance my mood. “I'm thinking about getting a different job,” I said. “I want to work where these people work. They all look so happy.”
“That's because they got here ahead of us, and they're all snockered.”
